Exercise and Medications: How Physical Activity Affects Your Drugs

When you move your body—whether it’s walking, lifting weights, or stretching—you’re not just building strength or burning calories. You’re changing how your body handles exercise, physical activity that influences heart rate, blood flow, and drug metabolism. Also known as physical activity, it can make some medications work better, weaker, or even trigger dangerous side effects. Many people take pills for depression, diabetes, high blood pressure, or migraines without realizing how much their daily movement changes what those pills do inside them.

For example, SSRIs, antidepressants commonly prescribed for older adults can cause low sodium levels when combined with too much sweating from exercise. That’s why older adults on these drugs need to watch for dizziness or confusion after workouts. Diabetes medications, like repaglinide or metformin, used to control blood sugar can drop glucose too far if you exercise without eating enough. And blood pressure drugs, including clonidine or beta-blockers, can mask how hard your heart is working during activity, making it harder to know when you’re pushing too far. Even migraine treatments, like rizatriptan or eletriptan, which narrow blood vessels in the brain, can behave differently when your body is warmed up and pumping blood faster.

Exercise isn’t just good for your heart—it’s a silent partner to your meds. Skip it, and your drugs might not work right. Do too much, too fast, and you could end up in the ER. The key is balance: know your meds, listen to your body, and adjust your movement accordingly. Below, you’ll find real-world guides on how specific drugs interact with activity, what symptoms to watch for, and how to move safely—even when you’re on multiple prescriptions.